Mal Practice
The medical phenomenon called Mal Practice, a small but insanely intelligent ex-Autobot with the disguise of an ambulance painted black, can only be described as twisted and sick. He had always demonstrated sadistic tendencies and it was these that led him to become one of Cybertron’s foremost experts at vivisectional surgery on mechanical lifeforms. Always on the lookout for the next 'upgrade', Mal Practice will hunt down a mech who has the upgrade he covets, irrespective of allegiance, and will entrap him to remove it directly from its current owner without hesitation if he feels it will benefit his talents and be an advantage to the team; If a mech comes in for repair that has better hardware than him, you can guarantee it will somehow 'get damaged' or go missing, only to turn up on one of his team members within a matter of hours. Taking great pleasure in his un-anesthetised work (thus ensuring that he can correctly gauge pain receptor functions), Mal Practice fell deeper into his bloodlust leading him to seek out newer ways of harming his enemies up close and personally and over time became interested in utilising his skills in direct combat. As his passions became darker, so did his attitude and that of those around him. Those he referred to as allies slowly turned their back on him and those who he thought of as his friends could not even bring themselves look him in the optics. He however refused to let this bother him, no friends meant more choice of subjects to work on, and emotions really weren’t a reoccurring issue in Mal Practices neural sub-routines when elbows deep in the thorax wiring of a screaming cadaver under electron restraint. After a hard evenings experimenting was interrupted by an untimely Autobot patrol investigating reports of the screams of agony, the perverted Medic was brought before the Autobot Medical Council and exiled from the faction for his crimes, dismissed instantly from the Autobots by the highest medical power on Cybertron; Ratchet, the deluded doctor so under the influence of Optimus Prime that it’s surprising he ever actually left his side at all. Weakness was all Mal could see standing before him and within milliseconds of leaving the chamber, Mal’s highly advanced neural routines had already made their most important decision… If the Autobots wouldn’t allow him to continue his studies, he knew a faction that would. He set out to find the Decepticons. It was not long before he found them either; a raiding party was already in full swing on an Autobot stronghold a few klicks to the south. By the time he had noticed the smoke and arrived, all that was left were a party of battle scarred Autobot scrap and a small Decepticon rapid attack force, lightly armoured but in pretty bad shape. Amongst the injured was his soon-to-become mentor and master, the cassetticon Psychout, the commander of the small group who had been leading the attack who was also on the run from his command. These two hit it off instantly, Mal’s direct but skilled treatment of the decepticon soldiers and his eagerness to strip all salvageable parts from the fallen defenders irrespective of their mortality status appealed to Psychout’s twisted sense of humour and together they tore the dead and dying Autobots down to their naked chassis’s, leaving the rest for the vultures and empties to fight over. It was the beginning of a long and profitable pairing. Psychout didn’t have any particular skills as such, just an evil mind, Machiavellian tendencies and a constant throbbing headache as the result of a botched reconnaissance mission a few mega-cycles previously, but with his technological and mechanical genius, Mal was able to decrypt the invasive data embedded and enveloping the small cassette’s head, and extract it for them all to see. This is where it all began to go a bit… strange. Standard data isn’t conscious. It does not have its own intelligence, it does not attempt to actively hide itself, and it certainly does not argue back. But whatever Psychout had stuck in his head was doing exactly that and even threatening to take over Psychout’s mind thus suppressing whatever personality he does have. This entity had a name, The Necronomitron, the Transformer Auditor of Reality, balancer of the books. Legend held that this was a creature of phenomenal power and anger yet somehow this insignificant Decepticon minion had absorbed it into his mind and, unimaginably, had retained not only his own consciousness, but had asserted control thus trapping the embodiment of evil within. Psychout was now the stubborn vessel for its imprisoned spark, and was refusing to budge. Mal Practice now had his mission. Under Psychout’s conscious control the Necronomitron was dormant, even docile in its cranial cell. If this expanse of power could be harnessed... It was quickly discovered that to control and house a being of this magnitude required mythical technology. Only one type of entity was capable of that level of containment and combined the neurological combination of a group of fractured minds to house a creature so powerful - the Gestalt. The decision was made to divide the spark of the dark creature into 5 components, each representing an aspect of its evil. Thus the 5 ‘Vile Sparks’ were created; Violence, Misery, Cruelty, Slaughter and Neglect. One problem arose though, where do they look to find 5 suckers… erm, volunteers to undergo this barbaric alteration and to accept these sparks as part of their own mind? The answer, the Heavy Metal Wars; the continued battle between good and evil. It was almost too perfect. Psychout and Practice set about assembling a team of abandoned loners and misfits, forced to band together as no one else would take them and gave them a purpose; when they were not fighting they were to have as good a time as mechanically possible – after all WarPorn was invented as a cover – they would be living in the mechanoid equivalent of the Playboy Mansion, but at the beck and call of The Necronomitron channelled through Psychout, and obliged to do his bidding. Now, under the cover of the Heavy Metal Wars, Mal Practice secretly studies and builds. He records and recreates, he alters and achieves. One day the institution he and Psychout set up as their cover will release the the future of combiner technology, upgrading their minions and enabling them to combine into a gigantic robot capable of destruction on an untold scale. The 5 bearers of the Vile Sparks when combined would meld together to bring the Daemonic power of the Necronomitron forth. But the results will show that it will be more, much more than they had originally bargained for...